CHAPTER III
THE NORMAN KINGS, 1066–1154
The power of the kings in Norman England.S0 at last there was going to be a real government in this country, and it was going to do its duty. Few kings in the Middle Ages had any high idea of their ‘duty towards their people’ such as a great Roman Emperor had, or such as King George V has. They chiefly thought of their country as a property, or ‘estate’, which they were going to cultivate mainly for their own benefit. But the better a king's ‘estate’ was cultivated, the better off were the people on it; and, when I say the ‘people’, I mean every one except a few, perhaps a couple of hundred of the barons’ or greatest landowners. A King could only grow very rich and powerful when his country was at peace at home and well armed against foreign foes; his people could only grow rich under the same conditions.
Their struggles with the barons, 1066–1175.Not so the great barons. Each of them could most easily increase his riches at the expense of some other great baron or of the King; and the people who lived near him would be the first to suffer if he were allowed to do so. William had been obliged to allow his barons and earls to judge and govern their tenants in accordance with those ‘feudal’ customs which had come to be universal in Western Europe since Roman law had been lost and strong government with it. The great Kings who succeeded him slowly, painfully, out of scanty material, had to recreate a strong government, and, so, to give peace and order.
